Is This Foursquare’s Coming Out Party?

By Mark Evans in Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

In 2008, SXSW conference in August marked the coming out party for Twitter. It was then and there that the digital elite embraced Twitter and cool concept of micro-blogging with so much enthusiasm that it started to spill out into the mainstream.

With SXSW kicking off on Friday, the question is whether the major theme this year that location-based services capture the spotlight. Will SXSW be the moment in time that Foursquare goes from the digital elite’s newest shiny toy into a service that starts to resonate with a much larger audience?

At this point, I’m not convinced Foursquare has enough appeal to more than a niche player. For now, Foursquare is a fun novelty that lets you broadcast your location by checking in. Hey, I’m at Tim Horton’s! Hey’s I’m at Starbucks? Hey, I’m the mayor of the Sunset Grill.

The reality is the novelty starts to wear off because there’s not much value in telling the world where you’re located or whether you’re such a creature of habit that you get become the “mayor”.

While I’m sure the SXSW crowd will find ways to use Foursquare because, after all, it’s new bauble. But it’s going to take more than just the gang in Austin to make Foursquare become significantly more than what it is now.

For Foursquare to jump to the next level, it has to offer more value for users and non-users. The value of Foursquare isn’t the location broadcasting but the “tips” that people are leaving about these places, and the value-added information being provided on top of it.

I don’t care that you’re the mayor of the Monk’s Table but the comments left about the beer being first-rate and, perhaps, a Zagat review are far more valuable and useful.

Right now, Foursquare users are a super-structure that needs lots of other stuff to give it substance. Maybe in this way, it is like Twitter, which became more valuable as more people used it.

While I’m sure Foursquare will get a lot of buzz week as it introduces a new look and feel, don’t expect to see a Twitter-like performance.

The Recession: A Victory for Canadian Startups

By Mark Evans in Venture Capital 2 Comments Tags: , , , ,

While the economic recession has been tough on many people, it has arguably been a good thing for Canadian start-ups.

What? Yup, bad times = good times for Canadian start-ups.

Here’s why: One of the realities of the recession has been that many companies have slashed their workforces to control costs. Many of these employees are smart, productive and talented but were turfed because corporate survival became paramount. These people are developers, programmers, designers, business analysts, communicators, marketers, salespeople and accountants.

With dim job prospects, many of these people started to take on project, contract and freelance work. The rates they have been charging are relatively modest given it’s been more important to get work than squeeze out every last penny from clients. In the process, these people have discovered they like being their own boss rather than working for someone else. The lifestyle freedom, flexibility and, as important, new professional challenges have proved to a good thing.

At the same time, customers are happy because they’re getting work from skilled and enthusiastic suppliers at lower costs than hiring a full-time employee or hiring a full-service agency. As a result, it’s been a win-win scenario for everyone involved.

So, what does this mean for Canadian startups?

Already forced to operate lean and mean because there’s a dearth of venture capital around (although that appears to be changing), Canadian start-ups have been able to tap into modestly-priced talent to get things done – anything from user-interface , design, development, marketing, financial services and sales work.

In the midst of the recession, start-ups have been able to get a lot of done without spending a lot of money. It may be a difficult economic landscape but start-ups are working to take advantage of it.

The big question is what happens when the economy starts to recover? What happens to many people who start getting full-time jobs again? Will this talent pool start to disappear? Will prices for freelance, contract and project assignment start to increase? Will start-ups stop enjoying a “Recession Dividend”?

The answer is probably but perhaps not to extent that you might think. Some people who have been forced to do their own thing may not want to head back to the cubicle farm, and will continue to offer great service at reasonable rates. Meanwhile, some companies that have received received bang-for-the-buck from freelancers and contractors may start to think there’s no reason to pay higher rates so they will continue to stay away from hiring full-time or using a full-service agency.

As we start to head out of the recession, there are encouraging signs that Canadian start-ups have weathered the storm and that smooth waters are on the horizon. With access to modestly-priced talent and an encouraging number of new seeds fund being created, the Canadian start-up landscape may be poised for good times.

What do you think? Have start-ups been able to capitalize on the recession? Will they continue to benefit when the economy bounces back?

Canadian Seed Capital Sprouting Up

By Mark Evans in Venture Capital 2 Comments Tags: , , , ,

Since I started covering Canada’s technology sector, a common theme has been the lack of start-up capital – something that has continued to be a source of frustration for many people despite all the attention it has attracted.

For all the talk about the New Economy, it has been a major disappointment to see smart entrepreneurs with good ideas not able to even get modest amounts of capital to develop them into products. Meanwhile, we look to the U.S. where YCombinator and TechStars are providing seed capital to a variety of cool start-ups.

There are, however, signs the Canadian start-up financing market could be emerging with the launch of Mantella Ventures, a $20 million investment fund that will support early stage technology ventures.

Mantella joins two other high-profile start-up investors, Rogers Ventures and Extreme Venture Partners, in what it is hopefully the start of more news for the start-up landscape, which is oozing in enthusiasm but lacking in dough, ray, me.

Robin Axon, who will manage Mantella along with Duncan Hill, said money for start-ups is materializing but, as important, these investors who want to be hands-on and involved in day-to-day operations rather than being passive investors.

“Toronto had a big venture community but it’s been fairly passive and we haven’t done a good job of building an ecosystem,” Axon said. “Now, it very supportive, hands-on. We need hands-on people with tons of advisers and angels involved in our deals.”

Hill added that the emergence of start-up investors is a “grassroots” development. “People recognize the need fore the ecosystem,” he said, adding that deal with Mantella happened after three months of discussions with Robert Mantella, president and CEO with Mantella Corp., a privately-owned commercial builder in Toronto.

Axon said the fund will finance 10 to 15 companies, and focus on mobile and Internet technology. “We are really looking for talent and great entrepreneurs we can build thing around. We are looking at people and companies who have the capital efficient mindset. I want to use very little capital to prove a heck of a lot to build a business one brick at a time.”

Mantella will be the financing entity was Hill and Axon will operate within Basecamp Labs, a start-up accelerator with two investments, Chango and Pushlife.

For more, check out Startup North.

Enabling a Rush of Innovation…and Revenue

By Mark Evans in Social Media 2 Comments Tags: , , ,

Big news from Twitter: it has officially launched its “Firehose” API in which third-parties can have 100% access to Twitter’s data. Twitter proclaims the announcement as something “Enabling a Rush of Innovation” but you could easily argue it is “Enabling a Rush of Revenue” as Twitter will start to charge for different API packages.

Much like the recent announcement that Twitter will start placing advertising within search results, the concept of charging for access to its API is a no-brainer from a business perspective. It’s something that I have argued in the past that Twitter should have been actively considering given the value that the API provides to third-party services looking to use the API to build businesses.

As GigaOm’s Liz Gannes points out, the big question now is now much Twitter will charge for its API. It makes sense that smaller users will likely pay nothing or a modest amount, while high-volume API users (Tweetdeck, Seesmic, Scoopler??) will pay significant amounts.

Twitter said there are seven companies now using Firehose – Ellerdale, Collecta, Kosmix, Scoopler, twazzup, CrowdEye, and Chainn Search. Twitter did not talk about pricing structures said “these companies range from funded startups to part-time, one-person operations so we came up with a fair way to license access that scales with their business”.

What we’re finally seeing from Twitter is the foundations for a business plan that will generate enough revenue to justify the venture capital that it has attracted. Generating revenue from advertising and its API is something that Twitter could have introduced months ago but, for whatever reason, it decided to wait until early-2010 to do it.

Maybe the time is finally right, or maybe Twitter’s investors have put the hammer down, and make it clear that it was time for Twitter to quickly evolve from a popular project into a viable business.

Building a Canadian Blog Directory?

By Mark Evans in Blogs, Social Media 6 Comments Tags: , , ,

In the past few months, I’ve been working with a lot of start-ups looking to spread the word about what they’re doing. Given the continuing decline of traditional media coverage, blogs are taking a more important role.

In Canada, however, it can be difficult to identify and target bloggers because there doesn’t seem to be a good, user-friendly directory to discover the most interesting, relevant or popular blogs. There have been some attempts to build a directory in the past but some of them have disappeared, or the directories don’t work well because they are hard to use, or the blog database leaves much to be desired.

So, how do you launch a valuable and useful Canadian blog directory that makes it easy to find the best, relevant, most interesting, most commented on or most active blogs? At the same time, how do new blogs that have great content capture the spotlight?

One of the challenges is that defining “best”, “most interesting” and “relevant” is difficult because they mean difficult things to different people. What’s “best” for one person may be completely unappealing to someone else.

As a result, a useful blog directory may involve different approaches. These could include:

1. Listing blogs based on things such as the number of RSS subscribers, how often content is posted, how many in-bound links they’ve attracted, or a ranking such as Quantcast or Compete.

2. A Wiki structure in which blogs could be added to the directory based on what people think of them. The Wiki could include rankings or thumbs/thumbs down voting to provide scoring. Of course, blogs could also be removed or edited by Wiki members.

3. A curated directory in which blogs would have to be nominated to be included. This would clearly involve subjectivity but it may be a solid approach in the short-term to establish a firm foothold.

At the same time, interesting new blogs would also be put into the spotlight to encourage people to visit the directory on a regular basis. It would also give bloggers some encouragement that their efforts are being recognized.

So, what approach do you think would work best? Is there a directory already out that there has potential?

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